Former SU basketball star Lazarus Sims to run Syracuse city parks

Updated on Mar 26, 2015 at 07:37 AM EDT

Former Syracuse University basketball star Lazarus Sims is the new parks commissioner for the city of Syracuse. Mayor Stephanie Miner appointed Sims to take over for Baye Muhammad, who is leaving for a job in Rochester. Sims poses Wednesday in the mayor's conference room at Syracuse City Hall.

Sims, 42, a Syracuse native, will take over the $72,000-a-year job from Baye Muhammad, who is leaving for a job with the city of Rochester.

Sims, who grew up playing basketball in Kirk Park on the South Side, said he is eager to "preach the message of the park'' and get more kids to use the city's parks and playgrounds.

"That's what I want to get these young kids to see, to get out of the house and stop playing the video games,'' Sims said.

SU point guard Lazarus Sims drives the lane and directs traffic during a 1995 game against Lafayette College. Sims has been named the new city parks commissioner in Syracuse.
Dennis Nett | dnett@syracuse.com

Muhammad
, who had been parks commissioner since 2011, was appointed Friday to a
$126,725-a-year job
as commissioner of neighborhood and business development in Rochester. Miner and her police chief, Frank Fowler, recruited Sims to take Muhammad's place, Sims said Wednesday. Fowler has been a friend and a mentor to Sims for many years, Sims said.

"Chief Fowler called me about a week and a half ago and said. 'I want to talk to you, I want to run something by you,' '' Sims recalled. "He said he talked with the mayor and he brought my name up and they thought it would be a good fit.''

Sims played point guard at SU from 1992 to 1996. As a senior co-captain, Sims helped lead Syracuse to the 1996 NCAA title game where the Orangemen lost to Kentucky. His 281 assists that season have been exceeded by only two SU players, Sherman Douglas and Michael Carter-Williams.

Since January, Sims has worked as a support specialist at McKinley-Brighton Elementary School through the Promise Zone program, which aims to help children with emotional or behavioral challenges. Before that, however, his career revolved around basketball.

After college, Sims had a professional playing career that took him overseas and through an alphabet soup of leagues including the CBA, USBL, IBA, IBL and ABA. He even played for the Harlem Globetrotters.

Sims joined SU coach Jim Boeheim's staff in 2007, where he served as the director of player development until 2011. In 2012, he took a job as
assistant coach at Binghamton University
, which lasted two years before Sims returned to Syracuse.

As parks commissioner, Sims will oversee a department with 93 full-time employees, more than 200 part-time workers and an annual budget of $8.6 million. He acknowledged that he will depend on the department's existing management team, including 22-year veteran John Walsh, the deputy commissioner, to keep things running smoothly while he learns the ropes.

The commissioner's position does not come with long-term job security. Miner will complete her final term as mayor in December 2017, and her successor will have the discretion to appoint new staff. As Sims put it, he is joining "the anchor leg'' of Miner's administration.

Sims said his college coaching jobs have given him some experience with directing people. As a young man, he also ran his own camps and clinics in city parks, where he managed a small staff.

But his greatest asset as commissioner will be his love for Syracuse parks, he said. Growing up, Kirk Park was a "safe haven'' from the troubles of youth and young adulthood, Sims said. That's something he hopes more kids will come to feel.

"At times, even when I played at Syracuse, when I got mad I went to Kirk Park,'' he said. "(If) I wasn't playing, or the games were bad, or whatever drama was going on, I would go to the park. That was my safe haven.''

Miner said Sims' background will make him a valuable leader at the parks department, where he will start work March 30.

"Through coaching and working with students in the Syracuse City School District, Lazarus has the vision needed to help improve the lives of young people in the city of Syracuse,'' the mayor said in a prepared statement.